Library of Congress Archiving Twitter and Facebook Post
By ysdata
Official Library of Congress Press Release
- Official Library of Congress Press Release
Listen to the official Library of Congress Press Release on how, why, when, what. This is the explanation from the Library of Congress Program Manager, Bill Lefurgy.
The New Digital Initiative
Bill Lefurgy is the program manager for the Library of Congress and in charge of the new digital initiative to archive our tweets and Facebook status updates. That means everything you post on twitter and soon Facebook will be stored in the Library of Congress Archives.
Why would the Library of Congress want to archive our messages? While the National Archives handles official government documents the Library of Congress handles any kind of information that might have historical value.
The Library of Congress, Twitter, and Facebook The New Archives
Library of Congress and Twitter
Over the past year, the Library of Congress and Twitter have been working out the finer details of including all our tweets in the Library of Congress Archives. Most people don’t realize all their tweets live in a public place. Twitter has its own archives of our tweets and is now ready to turn them over to the Library of Congress. The only way a tweet will not be stored by the Library of Congress is if it was declared private at the time it was sent.
What Will The Library of Congress Do With Your Tweets?
Once the Library of Congress has the Twitter data it will begin mining, creating algorisms, doing research, and producing study reports. For example, what is the mood of the public at any given time during the day? Or after breaking news, what does the majority think?
What do you think about the Library of Congress archiving our tweets?
This actually dose not make any sense since tweet messages are only archived for about two weeks on twitter.
If you listen to the attached mp3 you will understand that twitter has been archiving data for year and storing data for more then two weeks.
True. Twitter dose archive messages for longer than two weeks but the archive is not accessible for searches beyond two weeks and they are not indexable.
arusho 5 months ago
Interesting hub, I'd like to hear more.